Fantasy As Reality – Manufacturing the ‘Death’ of Bin Laden

As with most fabricated terror stories, the ‘Bin Laden is dead’ tale is full of contradictions, half-truths and outright lies. The fact that the story was fabricated from whole cloth is seen in the fact that the story is now changing from the details that initially ’emerged’.

Who precisely made the claim that ‘Osama’ had a weapon and shot at US forces and that he used a woman as a human shield? What situation could a US soldier have found himself in where he thought he was under direct fire from a person in a room when he was in fact not? What possible scenario could have played out where a person was perceived to have used a ‘human shield’ when that person did no such thing? These are the questions that need to be asked as part of a serious investigation into this matter. But don’t hold your breath.

As of now, we can only conclude that these two scenarios were simply made up as part of an initial report on the alleged death of Bin Laden and they point directly to a conscious plan, right from the beginning (or even long before the actual events of May 1st) on the part of US authorities to concoct a false story to be disseminated to the public.

Let’s not forget the words of a senior military officer involved in planning the US Imperial adventures in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. He said:

“This is the most information-intensive war you can imagine…We’re going to lie about things”

Allegations of the use of ‘human shields’ have often been made in the farcical ‘war on terror’ narrative. For someone to use an innocent civilian as a shield is rightfully understood as the epitome of cowardice and dishonor, and it is for this reason that such allegations are pulled out of the hat when Western government and military talking heads attempt to con the public with their account of military operations. The ‘human shield’ claim is a wonderful way for the governments and military forces of Imperial Western nations to justify the excesses of their trigger-happy trained killers as they ply their bloody trade in far off lands. The Israeli government and military for example have often used the ‘human shield’ claim to justify the cold blooded executions of unarmed Palestinian civilians. Indeed, it is the Israeli military that has most often used Palestinians (women and children included) as human shields as they go about their task of dealing with the “Palestinian problem”.

Getting back to the ‘death’ of Osama; the entire government story, to date, is laughable. Bin Laden was ‘buried at sea’ they claim, in accordance with Muslim practice, yet according to Dr Ahmed El-Tayyeb, the sheikh of Al-Azhar (who holds the highest seat of learning in the Sunni Muslim world), Bin Laden’s sea burial constituted “a humiliating disregard for the standard Muslim practice of burying the dead.” But that, frankly, is beside the point. The point here is that the claim that Bin Laden was buried at sea comes form the same initial script that gave us the now retracted ‘human shield’ claim. It is all designed to create the ‘reality’ of a situation that did not occur. Buried at sea means that no one can see the body, and the prevarication over producing any images or other evidence that Bin Laden was actually in that house is simply an effort by the Obama government to buy some time in order to fabricate some blurry and inconclusive images of someone being killed in that house and, perhaps, some video footage of a body being dumped over the side of a US navy ship.

“The death of Osama bin Laden at the hand of U.S. special forces doesn’t end the war against Islamic terror, but it is a crucial and just victory that is rightfully cause for celebration.

Especially so in a war fought against combatants who hide in the world’s dark corners, who rarely fight in the open and who attack innocents far from any conventional battlefield. Even if it took nearly 10 years, the skillful tracking and daring attack on al Qaeda’s founder shows that democracies can prevail in such a struggle […] The battle of Abbottabad is a triumph of intelligence, interrogation and special operations that are by necessity three of the main weapons in what the U.S. military has called this “long war.”

This is also a moment to salute George W. Bush. After 9/11, Mr. Bush began the counterattack that became the war on terror, developed and expanded the military and intelligence means to fight it, and never flagged in its pursuit even as his political opposition derided him for his determination. The attack even looks to be a vindication of Mr. Bush’s interrogation policies, as U.S. sources say the initial break that led to the operation, concerning a bin Laden courier, came several years ago from Guantanamo detainees.”

I’d like to make a few comments on the above bolded text:

The unfortunate suckers who have been whooping it up are in for a shock if they think that anything will change in their increasingly bleak circumstances as a result of the ‘death’ of Bin Laden. There will be no end to the racist war on ‘Islamic terror’. The Civil liberties that have taken a beating under the guise of protecting the homeland will continue to be eroded. Billions more of their tax dollars will continue to be squandered on illegal wars. Thousands more of their brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, will be killed in service to the psychopathic blood lust of their leaders. I do not, however, expect such intellectually-challenged individuals to have the slightest awareness of these implications. Hence their status of unfortunate suckers.

For the two WSJ pundits to pitch the purported Muslim ‘enemy’ as “combatants who hide in the world’s dark corners, who rarely fight in the open and who attack innocents far from any conventional battlefield” is surely the height of cynicism. Are we to assume that the authors’ are saying that US predator drones that obliterate entire villages and their innocent occupants form part of a ‘conventional battlefield’? Is that what the authors and the US military believe to constitute a ‘fair fight’? Perhaps they would like all self-professed Islamic militants to come out of their bunkers and duke it out with US forces mano-a-mano, or rather, AK-47 to F-16 jet?

And of course, no one should be surprised that this phony debacle is being used to trumpet the inherent righteousness of the US government’s use of brutal torture against innocent Muslims in torture rooms around the world and Guantanamo bay. Since the ‘torture scandals’ of a few years back, the US government, with the complicity of the US and Western media, has successfully convinced large sections of the public that torture is necessary and therefore ‘good’. In doing so they have compromised, perhaps fatally, whatever semblance of public conscience remained. It’s not that easy for a person to corrupt or even destroy their own soul, but we can be fairly sure that accepting in one’s heart and mind that the brutal torture of another person, let alone someone who is demonstrably innocent, will get you pretty far down that particular path.

As for “saluting George Dubya Bush” for his unflagging pursuit [of Bin Laden]; I would simply offer this evidence:

Given what we know about US governments and assorted overt and covert agencies over the past 10 years as they waged this duplicitous ‘war on terror’, we can fairly safely conclude that the ‘Bin Laden death’ event did not occur as claimed. So what did occur? Chances are that this was a CIA (with US paramilitary support) operation against what is now known to have been an ISI (Pakistani intelligence) safe house, mostly likely containing a number of Pakistani or Afghan informants who were involved in the infiltration of radical Muslim groups. It was, in that respect, no different than other such operations that have very likely occurred many times over the past 10 years. The difference on this occasion being that this operation was chosen to include the fabricated ‘death’ of Osama Bin Laden, a man who was more myth than reality and who, according to the most reliable evidence, died many years ago. The goal, as we have already begun to see, was to:

rally flagging support for the war on terror

boost public support for President Obama so that when he is chosen for another term in 2012, the American public will believe they have a functioning democratic system

reinforce waning public belief in the ‘reality’ of Islamic terrorism and the need for a ‘war on terror’

garner further public support and official justification for the continued imprisonment and torture of innocent Muslims

prop up the crumbling facade that portrays the United States of America and its allies around the world as Democracies, when in fact they are dictatorships in almost everything but name.